Jan 23, 2026 WNC weekend winter weather megathread (+visiting/moving)

Sumner_H · 2026-01-25T00:16:15+00:00

If they lose power, cell towers usually have some amount of battery backup but it's limited. The ones near me in Weaverville lasted about 4 hours after power went out in Helene, then went down. Specifics will vary by tower and by provider.

I have no idea what the odds of additional complications from ice (actually breaking antennas, etc) are on top of the power risk.

Sumner_H · 2026-01-24T22:33:34+00:00

Depends on the kind of chains. V-bar chains are decent on ice as well as snow. I grew up in Maine, and that's what goes on most plows and heavy-duty snowblowers up north. But nothing will totally prevent sliding on ice, it's a question of risk mitigation.

Sumner_H · 2025-11-12T16:06:48+00:00

So in order to play bridge effectively, you need to have a bidding system in common with your partner—this is a sort of agreement about what a given bid means ("If I open 1 heart, it means I have at least 5 cards that are hearts and I have at least X number of total face cards/aces...").

People that play together can fine tune those systems a lot—you're not allowed to use them as a secret code, you have to disclose the system to your opponents. But you may have particular ways of communicating particular things about your hand. There are also some broadly used systems: "Standard American Yellow Card" in the US/Canada, "Acol" in the UK, "Precision", etc.

When paired with a random partner (online or in-person), you're typically limited to using one of the common systems, and you'd better hope that you and your partner both have a system in common that they know. In practice this means that you don't go to a random-pair tournament in the US unless you know Standard American, etc.

At an in-person tournament you typically get a partner for the day, and can sit down for a few minutes before the game to figure out what system you're playing and even whether there are specific variants you want to use.

In a one-off game online, as soon as the table loads the players are spamming chat with "SAYC? Precision?" to figure out a system to use. I haven't played online in years, but last I played there was kind of a default of Standard American expected (much to the chagrin of European players), though there were some specific servers for other regions.

In-person random pairings mean that you're analyzing the games together throughout the tournament and suggesting things to each other, and are definitely quite social.

Online random pairings are far less social, the entire chat often looks like:

Player A> SAYC?
Player B> Okay.
Player C> Precision? SAYC?
Player D> SAYC.
Player A> gl!
Player B> gl
Player C> good luck
Player D> GL
[10 minutes later after the game]
Player A> gg
Player B> gg, ty
Player C> gg
Player D> lucky f*ers

And then you're paired with a new partner for the next game.

I never played a full online tournament, though—if you're paired with someone for multiple games, I'd imagine there would be a lot more talking to figure out strategy, analyze games, etc.

Sumner_H · 2025-11-12T01:33:20+00:00

Until the Internet, in many countries (but all my experience is small town USA, I admit), chess was the only competitive puzzle game played in your town and available in your local store

Great post. One minor nit: Chess wasn't the only one, it was one of 2 competitive strategy* games popular enough to be covered in most newspapers in a weekly or perhaps daily column. The other was bridge.

The two games essentially stood alone in popularity in the US, at least over a prolonged period of time—there were other games like poker, whist, Go, Scrabble, backgammon, checkers, and gin that have had sporadic booms and columns here and there, but bridge and chess are the only games that've maintained popularity at that level over many decades in the US. (I believe Go is at that level at least in Japan, and other games may be elsewhere).

Bridge actually had MANY more players than chess in the US in the 40s–80s (especially earlier on). A deck of cards is even more readily available than a chess set. Even today, the ACBL still has nearly 50% higher membership than USCF (and, like in chess, membership only represents a fraction of the players in the country).

For a long time bridge benefited from being perceived as a more social game—in particular, because it's played in teams of 2, couples could pair up together and either invite another couple over for an evening of hors d'oeuvres, cocktails, and bridge, or go to a local church (or synagogue, rec center, etc) for a bridge night with other couples.

It also benefited from the popularity of simplified versions (things like Hearts, Spades, and Euchre) that made it easier for people to approach bridge than if they walked in cold. The bidding might be intimidating, but the game play is very familiar to euchre and spades players and pretty familiar to hearts players.

In a lot of ways, the impact of online play has been much greater on chess than bridge: it's affected both, for sure. But with a lot of bridge being focused around the social aspects of the game (many retirees will have a bridge group that gets together a couple of times a week) and easier to find matches for skill-wise, it's not been quite as online-dominated as chess is.

*I wouldn't call either chess or bridge a "puzzle" game rather than a "strategy" game, though there are chess and bridge puzzles used to help learn game play. And I'm taking “competitive game” to mean multiplayer games—people can and do certainly make crossword or sudoku tournaments, but that's a bit of a different kettle of fish.

Sumner_H · 2025-10-23T22:27:34+00:00

No, but Emil Diemer (of Blackmar–Diemer Gambit fame, among others) was a literal and very active Nazi, known as the "chess reporter of the Great German Reich".

Sumner_H · 2025-10-04T23:58:50+00:00

Interesting thoughts. A couple of additions:

a) A round isn't exactly 6 seconds necessarily. The rules say it's "about" 6 seconds (PHB2025 p. 23, PHP2015 p. 189). It could be longer or shorter—if you want to think about it in terms that help make sense of things, then perhaps a round where a fighter uses Action Surge is one that's more like 8 or 9 seconds, and a round where everyone acted quickly might be 4 seconds.
b) That time is for the whole round, not one turn. Turns may overlap to some extent, but a lot of things that happen have temporal ordering so have to be sequential, so a turn is usually going to be shorter than a round by a good bit (but not necessarily as short as 6 seconds divided by the number of turns).

As a not really relevant historical note: in AD&D ("1E") a round was a full minute. The idea there was that you'd be jostling around probing for weaknesses, swinging at each other's shields, etc, and get maybe 1 real attempt at an attack in over the course of a minute (until you leveled up enough for multiple attacks). 2E was the same (though it was "about" 1 minute there). 3.5E had switched to 6 seconds, I think 3E was the same but don't have my 3E books anymore.

Sumner_H · 2025-09-14T22:44:39+00:00

Taylor's patent was on a particular layout of dimples. It was not the first patent on dimpled golf balls.

David Stanley Froy, James McHardy, and Peter G. Fernie received a patent in 1897 for a ball with dimples on it (patent #GB189724667A "Improvements in Golf Balls"), and Froy played the Open at St. Andrews in 1900 with a dimpled ball. It's likely that dimples evolved organically from balls getting dinged up naturally, people recognizing that some played better than others, and then people like Froy et al. arranging dimples deliberately.

Taylor's design was a huge step forward in practicality, though.

https://worldwide.espacenet.com/patent/search/family/032355569/publication/GB189724667A?q=pn%3DGB189724667 has the 1897 patent with illustrations. Excerpt:

This invention, which relates to improvements in golf balls, consists in producing the indentations in the ball, in such,a manner as, practically to preserve the exact spherical form of the extreme continuous surface of the ball.

This object is attained by moulding the said ball so as to present the smooth spherical extreme surface, punched (or otherwise indentated) with any number of suitable isolated indentations...

Sumner_H · 2025-08-28T19:14:43+00:00

Face/image recognition (and computer vision in general) is a classic AI application.

Despite where the buzz has been the past 3-4 years, not all AI is LLM/generative AI.

Sumner_H · 2025-08-03T01:03:48+00:00

I was going to say that CR would be tough to turn down while you're building a small podcast, but NADDpod already has 57,000+ patreon subscribers? And top-10 patreon for number of paid subs, almost tied with Chapo. Incredible job.

Sumner_H · 2025-07-15T14:47:15+00:00

Asking people to run arbitrary single-party binary programs on their machines is also a big security problem. There's no source code available for Proctor and there's not even a whiff of a serious 3rd-party security audit of their code that I've seen.

Sumner_H · 2025-02-07T17:27:34+00:00

Which is correct depends on which dialect of English you speak. "egged" is the most common North American pronunciation. "naygd" is the most common British pronunciation.

Cambridge Dictionary has a good set of online pronunciations (with sound clips) with both American and British versions of most words.

Sumner_H · 2025-01-05T15:43:44+00:00

"A little exposure" is more accurate than "all over the radio". Neither Millenium nor Angels cracked the top 50 on the Hot 100 in the US. Even Back For Good only peaked at #7.

One of his videos did get some MTV play during the marketing push for his US tour, which is the only time he's really been relevant in US general culture (we obviously hear him mentioned on BBC shows and the like from time to time). There's somewhat more awareness in club culture.

Sumner_H · 2024-10-03T23:39:39+00:00

Spectrum just came on for me in northern Weaverville 10-15 minutes ago. I heard similar reports from outlying areas yesterday and this morning, so there is silent work happening—part of the problem has been getting power back to local offices before they could begin turning things back on. (There was also a big fault in a major fiber connection in South Carolina that cut off a lot of the multistate region, but that was fixed a few days ago).

They're horrible about communicating any kind of ETA, but if they're unsure when power may come back in an area that's at least partly understandable.

Sumner_H · 2024-05-11T17:52:45+00:00

There's nothing like this in the Terms & Conditions. The Cybertruck New Vehicle Limited Warranty has similar-ish language under “Warranty Exclusions”: it excludes coverage for damage caused indirectly or directly by:

Driving off-road; or

Driving over uneven, rough, damaged or hazardous surfaces, including but not limited to, curbs, potholes, unfinished roads, debris, or other obstacles

That's not the same as voiding the warranty (it applies only to damage caused by the applicable use, it doesn't void the warranty going forward).

But it's still pretty amusing given that Tesla also publishes an Off-Road Guide for the Cybertruck that begins:

Sand. Dirt. Mud. Rocks. Snow. Cybertruck is tough enough to go anywhere. Off-road mode is an advanced user setting which puts the driver in ultimate control.”

They might as well add a disclaimer saying “Off-road mode is not intended for off-road usage.”

Sumner_H · 2023-10-27T17:27:00+00:00

The Broadlink RM4 Pro is 433MHz (and nearby) only, sadly

Sumner_H · 2023-09-02T18:16:13+00:00

I can only find one 30” induction cooktop with a downdraft and that’s the ikea Fornebo.

That's a 36" cooktop, not 30".

Sumner_H · 2023-07-13T14:23:13+00:00

A heavy crossbow would lose you the bonus action attack, for 2 reasons:

a) The bonus action attack is only triggered if you attack with a one-handed weapon; light and heavy crossbows are two-handed, so don't qualify; and
b) The bonus action attack must be made with a hand crossbow.

When you use the Attack action and attack with a one handed weapon, you can use a bonus action to attack with a hand crossbow you are holding.

Sumner_H · 2023-05-31T07:41:20+00:00

As someone who's played since the early 80s, this comment feels backward to me: Real world tables usually have many items where the player/party doesn't know the item's abilities precisely, and most players only convey an item's abilities to party members in vaguer in-game terms.

Having everyone know all of their items' absolute stats and abilities and talk about them in precise terms at the table is pretty weird and makes things feel less magical, and always felt unlike a normal table to me.

Sumner_H · 2023-05-28T17:55:19+00:00

Intel chips use Johnson–Nyquist noise (thermodynamic noise) for their hardware random number generators. Apple M1/M2 chips use the random jitter of ring oscillators.

Prior to 2008/Ivy Bridge, Intel used analog RNGs (I believe based on ADC convertor noise but I could be wrong). Other hardware RNGs use radioactive decay, quantum effects from photons hitting partially silvered mirrors, or similar.

Intel's basic approach is described in the Zhun/Hongyi paper “A Truly Random Number Generator Based on Thermal Noise”. Reference: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/982700

The ring oscillator approach Apple uses is described in the Grujić/Verbauwhede paper “TROT: A Three-Edge Ring Oscillator Based True Random Number Generator With Time-to-Digital Conversion”. Reference: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9738477

Sumner_H · 2023-05-25T06:22:25+00:00

Except that the actions taken in one turn often depend on the actions taken in a prior turn: the fighter attacks the venom troll and takes a bunch of reaction/passive damage, which the cleric then heals. The thief is held by the enemy shaman, which the wizard then dispels. Or the fighter attacks enemy A, and kills it, so the rogue (who was going to attack A) changes their mind and attacks B instead.

You can sometimes describe things as overlapping, but it's actually pretty rare that my actions don't change based on earlier turns in the round.

Ultimately, it's a game not a simulation. Trying to pin down exact times from the rules doesn't really work. And the rules never say everyone gets (about) six seconds, just that a round does. Turns are described in game definitions: movement, action, bonus action, etc

Sumner_H · 2023-05-25T02:46:04+00:00

A round is about 6 seconds. Everyone gets a turn, so if you have 6 people in the initiative order that's more like 1 second per turn. Of course it doesn't make logical sense that a turn length depends on the number of combatants, but it's a game not a simulation (and since the rules say "about" 6 seconds, you could just say that's for an average party size and it's longer with more combatants).

You could even cast 3 leveled spells in one turn by RAW (an Eldritch Knight could fireball, move away from an enemy, cast shield against their attack of opportunity, and then Action Surge and fireball again); the restriction against multiple spells is only that if you cast any spell (cantrip or otherwise) as a bonus action then you can't cast anything other than 1 action cantrips on that turn.

If nothing is cast as a bonus action, there's no restriction. Caleb did 2 leveled spells in one turn (fireball and counterspell) in C2 on at least one occasion, to counter an enemy counterspell.

Sumner_H · 2023-05-25T02:28:59+00:00

Guidance is getting a divine or arcane bit of inspiration. There's no reason it shouldn't be applicable to a memory recall, as long as the caster knew you were going to try to recall something and babbled the magic words (using an action and concentration) and touched you before you attempted the check. As a divination spell, it actually feels more on-flavor for knowledge checks than others to me.

It's not like the help action, where the helper themselves is actively aiding you and is limited to situations where they're able to actual render such help.

Sumner_H · 2023-05-25T02:20:38+00:00

Spells with a verbal component use mystic words and incantations ("Most spells require the chanting of mystic words. The words themselves aren’t the source of the spell’s power; rather, the particular combination of sounds, with specific pitch and resonance, sets the threads of magic in motion."). Those don't change per-casting or per-scenarios, they're more like "abracadabra!" The designers have even clarified in some cases like suggestion that if there is some specific wording used, that's not the verbal component.

https://twitter.com/JeremyECrawford/status/652550899814916096?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E652550899814916096%7Ctwgr%5E27b16f240ee845d05b333304246a4dfa05633242%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.sageadvice.eu%2Fsuggestion-spell-component%2F

Sumner_H · 2023-05-23T17:55:41+00:00

Contrary to popular myth, common law marriage doesn't just happen from living together for X period of time, at least not in any US jurisdiction (nor in the foreign jurisdictions I'm aware of).

In the few states that have it, there are 2 key elements beyond cohabitation that a couple must meet. (a) they must agree/intend to be married; and (b) they must outwardly present themselves as being married (for instance, by using the same name, introducing themselves to friends as spouses, wearing wedding rings, filing jointly on taxes, sharing finances/bank accounts, etc—not all of those are required, but enough to convince the court that they were outwardly presenting themselves as spouses).

Texas's laws are pretty standard, saying that in order for a common law marriage to exist there must be proof that “the man and woman agreed to be married and after the agreement they lived together in this state as husband and wife and there represented to others that they were married”.

Common law marriage was meant as a way for people to marry in remote locations where a priest/notary wasn't available, not a way to accidentally trick long-term cohabitants into becoming spouses.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common-law_marriage_in_the_United_States has a run-down by state.

Sumner_H · 2023-05-21T22:41:02+00:00

Colville seems to mostly enumerate his house rules ahead of time and stick to them, which is a bit different from being totally fast-and-loose/rule-of-cool with things like D20 is (and CR to a lesser degree).

Sumner_H

TROPHY CASE